I am Here to Testify: My Full Testimony

God has put it on my heart to share my testimony over the last couple of weeks. Yes I have an “about” page however that is just a snip of the story. Honestly I re-read that and its very jumpy and smashed together. It was after all my first blog post! Planning on a redo.

So, Here we GO!! I am here to Testify!!

HI! I am Rachael, I am 42 years old and I am a constantly recovering sinner………..I started going to church as a kid with my mom, I was 8 I believe when we first stepped into a church. Growing up in the church until I was a teen I had a great love for Jesus. I was thrilled when DC Talk came on the scene and gave us “the younger generation” christian music that was cool. As well as The Newsboys, I remember going to see them with my youth group. It was awesome. I ended up leaving the church we attended well after my parents left. My parents received very unGodly counseling after my Uncle had passed. The opinion of the church was not in-tune on God forgiving people of sin, which my Uncle had and had accepted Jesus a couple of years before his death. To put it semi lightly we were told it didn’t matter if he asked forgiveness that he was burning in hell. My Uncle most of his life was gay. That put a bad taste in my mouth for churches and organized religion.

So after all that I had “lukewarm faith” from the time I was a teen until mid ’08. Which means I believed just wasn’t as active in my faith anymore. Definitely did not attend church. Which I know they are not all bad. Then after my tragically short marriage in 96-97(it lasted a bit over a year) I had taken my newborn son and left the marriage that was full of a cheating husband. I tried hard to focus on God. I needed him. I continued to try with my faith even after I met and married my current husband a couple of years later.

In ’08 hell unleashed on my marriage. Bringing my marriage to a firm halt. I had prayed and prayed and prayed about our relationship prior to that point. I could see that we weren’t great. However if you are not right with God, they go unanswered. Yeah, I learned that the hard way. This took a tole on my faith. Didn’t he hear me praying? Didn’t he care? I felt “how dare he turn his back on me in this horrible situation”. I felt abandoned. My light went out totally and completely. It got so bad that I shunned anything remotely about God.

My enemy WON that battle. He took all trust, love and HOPE that I had. I didn’t see this until years later just what I really went through at that point in time. Not only did my marriage get rocked but so did my faith and belief in God. I was so so angry with him. How dare he. I am a good person and I don’t do bad things why had he forsaken me.

….sigh….

He didn’t abandon me, I abandoned him. I needed a quick fix to my problems and I wasn’t getting it. I was like a 2 year old with a missing binkie. Again 100% blind to this at the time. It took more time than I care to admit but my husband and I worked through everything. However I was still down. I still felt defeated and less than. Like nothing I could do or say was enough for my husband or anyone. I just was not happy. I was sad more than anything else all the time. I was depressed. I chose not to feel anything. It got to a point a few years ago that I was just tired of it. I was tired of feeling beat down by life. I set out to find a soul makeover. I NEEDED JOY! I found a few quotes on my old friend Pinterest that just clicked that were Buddhist. So I dug more. What else could I learn from this. No mention of God so I was good there. Just peace and mindful living. Though when I would meditate…I kept feeling a need for MORE! You know that unmistakable tug we all know so well. At that point I had seen Courageous and I really like it. As well as a couple other of the Kendrick Brother movies.

As I have said before last year my husband and I hit a bad patch yet again. Our jobs (or sudden lack of) and stress got the better of both of us but it was causing major damage to our marriage. We started to take things out on each other more often than not. We hit a breaking point and I was making plans to leave. A week long out of town/state trip in May last year for my job I guess was what we needed because it caused us to both stop & think. Although for my husband that’s when how bad things were hit him. To which he kept on at me while I was hundreds of miles away to the point I said “Look I’m DONE, I can’t do this anymore.” By the time I left to return home I was just numb. We finally sat down and both laid everything out. Our wants, needs, and must haves. It was ruff summer at first but we both worked really hard and long and did a major fix on our communication skills. Which had gotten horribly broken. By the middle to end of July we were better than ever.

I had urged my husband to pray, since he still believed, and I kept on with my meditation and mindfulness during the chaos. His prayers must have done something because after this the tug got stronger and the voice louder, I thought nothing of it. I just knew in this time something just kept weighting on me. Again with the tug. I kept seeing little signs here and there, but I didn’t budge. That lead to at the end of a swim meet in Sept we watched God’s Not Dead 2. That was all it took. On the drive home I just looked up and heard him say “Did you hear me that time?” and said “yes okay I heard you & I’m coming home”. I heard that voice pleading with me to listen. God had been using little things like that and other people in my life to reach me. From one of my employees (who’s faith is just inspiring) to a student who now I call a friend would ever so gently push me His way. I had to tell my mom later what happened in her car. She cried tears of joy. She had also been praying for me to rekindle my relationship with Jesus, unknown to me at the time.

Look at me Now…

I can’t explain how or why, but this walk with Him is so so so much different than anything I had in the past. Its pure and amazing. He sparked that fire and it lit me up. Have you ever felt on fire for God? Truly amazing. My level of peace has grown. I am fervent about my faith and relationship with my Father. I now wear my faith like a piece of clothing(or armor) like I never did before. I needed joy those last few years well I found it. I have learned so much and grown so much over the last 10 months. I was just thinking about it the other day, I am so not the person I was last year at this time. I am not sure that I would recognize myself.

God uses what ever he can to reach the unreachable. Now I am on a mission to reach others. I asked God to use me, to use my light, my FIRE. So he said “Go forth & blog”. Haha, I’m just kidding he did’t say that. BUT I did feel that tug(*wink*) to share my faith and my baby christian beginnings. And that lead to this!! I have also joined an amazing blogging community of women in different parts of their walk, different countries, different backgrounds and they encourage me daily to be strong, to keep going, to cling to Jesus. I am so so so so grateful and thankful for basically this second chance at life.

Meet Rachael

Thank you for joining me at Backyard Faith where you will go on a journey with me about my faith, my life as a wife, & mom to 3 amazing young men. When I am not reading or journaling, I love spending time with my guys most likely at a swim meet. I am a Boymom through and through.

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